As most everyone will appreciate, it is very difficult to take handwritten notes while actively participating in an on-going conversation or lecture, whether or not one is simply listening or activity conversing with others. At best, the conversation becomes choppy as the note-taker must pause in the conversation (or in listening to the conversation) to commit salient points of the conversation to notes. Quite often, the note taker misses information (which may or may not be important) while writing down notes of a previous point. Typing one's notes does not change the fact that the conversation becomes choppy or the note taker (in typing the notes) will miss a portion of the conversation.
Recording an entire conversation and subsequently replaying and capturing notes during the replay, with the ability to pause the replay while the note taker captures information to notes, is one alternative. Unfortunately, this requires that the note taker invests the time to re-listen to the entire conversation to capture relevant points to notes.
Most people don't have an audio recorder per se, but often possess a mobile device that has the capability to record audio. While new mobile devices are constantly updated with more computing capability and storage, creating an audio recording of a typical lecture would consume significant storage resources.